Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Faced with the demon beasts that had gathered around him but were too afraid to attack after seeing one of them being essentially erased with nothing more than a casual wave of the hand, Xuan Hao couldn’t help rolling his eyes as he wondered if these were truly the troublemakers that the formation spirit had mentioned that were difficult to take care of in its current state.

After all, though they had reached the Celestial Immortal Realm in terms of strength, they were fragile to the point where he felt that it was entirely possible for someone in the Dao Seed Realm to kill these demon beasts. If anything, it felt like their strength at the Celestial Immortal Realm had been forcibly reached. Meaning that they couldn’t exert the real strength of someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm.

To describe them in another way, they had the attack power of someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm but were more fragile than someone in the Dao Seed Realm. Odd to say the least considering that it was clear that they hadn’t attained this strength through some kind of forbidden technique that sacrificed their own foundation to achieve this kind of strength for a short time.

The strength they had was permanent from everything he could tell through his divine sense that was now no longer limited after having released the self-imposed seal on his cultivation base after being sure that the guardian formation of the ancient secret realm wouldn’t be able to notice his presence nor launch a sudden attack on him because of this.

In case it really did end up happening, he wasn’t too worried about the guardian formation itself, as he at least felt somewhat confident in escaping from the ancient secret realm before the guardian formation had a chance to move against him. The thing that worried him was the spatial storm that should be raging outside the ancient secret realm, as he understood full well that there was no way for him to safely navigate through it with his current strength and comprehension of the Dao of Space.

The only possible escape would be for him to immediately leave the void. Placing him somewhere that was undoubtedly far from the Ewaria Continent.

Shaking his head as he thought about potentially ending up in that kind of deadly situation, Xuan Hao didn’t focus much on the surrounding demon beast that had frozen in fear around him after the pressure of his cultivation base spread outwards and reached them. Instead, he took the opportunity to spread out his divine sense to take in this core of the holy lake that was guarded by an ancient formation that had undoubtedly reached a similar level to the guardian formation guarding the ancient secret realm.

Rumble~!

But alongside the spread of his divine sense, he also took the opportunity to care of the demon beasts that the formation spirit had asked him to deal with. Not bothering to dedicate much of his attention on these demon beasts after realizing that they were even easier to kill than someone at the Dao Seed Realm if one ignored their terrifying offensive power compared to someone in the Dao Seed Realm.

Essentially, wherever his divine sense reached, a terrifying sword intent descended a short time after. Killing any of the demon beasts in the area before they even had the time to react.

If they had truly reached the Celestial Immortal Realm, this would not have been possible, but with only their strength having reached that level while everything else including their reaction speed was worse than that of a Dao Seed Realm cultivator, they had no way to fight back as they fell without a single sound.

At first, Xuan Hao had thought that everything would be simple considering the demon beasts didn’t pose any real threat to him, but as his divine sense continued to spread outwards towards the core of the holy lake, his relaxed expression slowly became more complex, as his easygoing expression disappeared completely.

Although the demon beasts didn’t seem to get stronger the closer to the core he got, the sheer number of demon beasts was simply terrifying, as he had already killed off thousands by this point.

Weak as they were, the strongest of them could unleash power comparable to the Late Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm, while the weakest could still barely reach the Early Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm in terms of power.

If all these demon beasts decided to launch a combined attack towards him… Even if he had reached the Land Creation Realm and could be considered stronger than other cultivators at the Early Stage of the Land Creation Realm, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance in the face of that kind of terrifying combined attack…

Not to mention, he also noticed that there was a very clear change taking place around the different ruins on the lakebed the closer he got to the core of the holy lake and that was the presence of several strange flowers that had suddenly sprouted around these ruins.

Normally, the addition of a few underwater flowers wouldn’t be enough to worry him, but these flowers were far from ordinary, as it didn’t take long for him to realize that these strange flowers seemed to be the birthplace of the strange demon beasts he had been killing so far. Drawing energy from somewhere unknown to nurture these demon beasts that would then be spat out by the flowers when they had at least grown to a level comparable to the Early Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm.

In other words, the demon beasts he had encountered so far, comparable to the Early Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm, should be newly born demon beasts, while the stronger ones above should be the ones that had been around for longer and had managed to stay alive.

But at this realization, it also became clear that reaching a level comparable to the Late Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm shouldn’t have been the limit of these strange demon beasts, as they should have grown far stronger than that given just how long this ancient secret realm had been around or at the very least this place had been abandoned.

The reason being that his brief sweep over these demon beasts with his divine sense before his sword intent caught up and killed them made it clear that these demon beasts didn’t rely on killing each other for strength, but instead seemed to absorb some kind of unique sap that was created by another underwater flower far more abundant than the one that gave birth to the demon beasts.

Looking around himself, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that this unique strength boosting flower to these demon beasts could be found everywhere around the core of the holy lake. Essentially covering the lakebed entirely.

And from the increase in strength, he had observed from these demon beasts who consumed the unique sap from these flowers, it would at most take them five thousand years to reach the Late Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm. Meaning that with the time this place had been around, there should be demon beasts far beyond the Late Stage of the Celestial Immortal Realm.

Considering that the formation spirit wanted him to deal with the demon beasts that were capable of sapping away its strength from the inside that were also impossible for it to deal with on its own without shifting away a significant portion of its attention and power, he guessed that the demon beasts he had been killing so far weren’t the ones mentioned by the formation spirit, as those demon beasts would hardly take much effort for the formation spirit to kill off. Especially considering they were essentially locked away within the formation spirit’s formation.

The problem was, he had yet to encounter any of these troublesome demon beasts yet and began feeling increasingly worried about how strong these demon beasts might be. After all, though it was clear that the demon beasts were weak in terms of defense, their offensive might be downright terrifying if they could continue growing beyond the Celestial Immortal Realm.

To be on the safe side, he had to be prepared to potentially face a large number of demon beasts capable of wielding strength at the Land Creation Realm or rather the Celestial Lord Realm considering these demon beasts seemed to be following a path that looked like the Celestial Realm in his eyes.

For this reason, the closer he got to the core of the holy lake, the more tense he got. Slowing down his initial fast approach down to a crawl, as he didn’t want to accidentally rush into a large group of powerful demon beast nor did he want to accidentally alert them ahead of time with his divine sense and give them time to attack him before he could cut them down and take advantage of their weak defense.